Roundup: E-Ink Readers

Sub Title: Roundup: E-Ink Readers

When it comes to book-length reading, no glowing LCD tablet screen can hold a backlight to the eye-saving e-ink of these readers.

The Basics

Why not a full-fledged tablet?

Entry-level e-readers have become better, faster, and more stylish. Considering their low cost, featherweight portability (6 to 7 ounces), battery life (up to a month per charge), and superior readability, it's easy to justify having an e-reader and a tablet. Also, the lack of distractions on a dedicated reader is nice.

Are these really that much better than my first-gen e-reader?

Yes. It's comparable to the differences in smartphones before and after the iPhone. E-readers used to have tiny QWERTY keyboards; today, most have touchscreens or navigation buttons instead. Manufacturers have reduced both the length and the number of the obnoxiously distracting flashes as the screen refreshes between pages. The devices are also about 40 percent lighter now.

What about their associated ebookstores?

Every dedicated e-reader worth buying is tied to an ebookstore—Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and so on. This means you're generally limited to that store's selection and prices. Publishers make most new books available at the same price for each retailer, but there are gaps between catalogs. For example, Kobo's ebookstore has 41 newspapers and magazines, while the Amazon store has more than 300.

Buying Advice

Don't worry about memory. Even the cheapest readers can hold hundreds of books. Your two factors are bookstore and price. If you've already bought a bunch of ebooks from Barnes & Noble, why switch to a Kindle? After that, get the cheapest unit you're comfortable with. But note that some e-readers flicker more between pages than others. If you think a flicker is slightly annoying in the store, it will drive you absolutely nuts by page 200 of that Murakami novel.

Kobo Touch

Our surprise winner is the most natural e-ink reader we've ever used. Its touchscreen is the fastest and most responsive, yet it's also smart enough to ignore unwanted inputs (a common failing in this class of devices). The shopping experience isn't as personalized or directed as Amazon's or Barnes & Noble's, but the store's pricing and selection are catching up. Kobo also remains arguably the best choice for a truly international e-reader, due to its wide-ranging set of global partners and willingness to allow content from other stores that use the EPUB standard (including Sony and Smashwords).

Sony Reader PRS-T1

Sony earns high marks for industrial design here, with a beautiful gloss finish on the front, matte on the back, and five handsome metal buttons. But that care didn't extend to the software, which is an awkward mess of boxes. The stylus is a disappointment, too. Ideally, you could select handwriting input once and use it to annotate throughout a book. Instead, you have to put the device in handwriting mode for every page. For readers who already have a large library of Sony eBooks, Kobo is a better choice.

WIRED Intelligent options for browsing free books from Google Book Search or local libraries.

Nook Simple Touch

Barnes & Noble's beautiful new reader lets you customize just about every aspect of the reading experience, from fonts to margins to how the buttons turn the pages. The initial setup connects the device quickly to your social network accounts, making it easy to share books or post annotations to Twitter, Facebook, and BN's own NookFriends social network. The Nook Touch was beginning to look expensive in this entry-level field, because Amazon was undercutting on price. In response, BN dropped the cost by $40.

WIRED Painless setup. Best social integration in our test. Most customizable interface.

TIRED No web browser. Page-turning hardware manages to be both confusing and unresponsive.

You've read Tim's take -- now read what Wired editor John Abell has to say about the Nook

Amazon Kindle

The category giant has the most comprehensive selection of books, periodicals, and even games. The new Kindle is cheaper and, at 6 ounces, lighter than ever — it remains the best entry point for beginning e-readers. Amazon kept the hardware buttons on the sides, which remains the most natural way to turn pages. But the menu buttons are frustratingly hard to distinguish from one another.

WIRED Six language choices (English US/UK, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese). Still packs a web browser. Widest selection of available titles. Best price out there.

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